[Reproducibility of results for overnight pulse oximetry in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].

Overnight pulse-oximetry (PO), as the only non-invasive method assessing arterial blood oxygenation during sleep, became widely used additional criterion for the long-term oxygen therapy especially in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. The aim of this study was to assess the reproductibility of pulse-oximetry in COPD patients. We studied 20 stable COPD pts mean age 64.6 +/- 7.2 years with severe airway obstruction-FEV1 = 0.87 +/- 0.33 L and hypoxaemia-PaO2 = 55.8 +/- 6.9 mmHg. Three PO were performed in each patient at one and seven nights intervals. There were no statistically significant differences in results obtained at all three PO. The mean oxygen saturation changed from one night to another only by 0.1%, the initial and final-maximally by 0.5%. High correlations for mean oxygen saturation (r = 0.94 and 0.78 respectively), initial oxygen saturation (r = 0.78 and 0.52) and final oxygen saturation (r = 0.69 and 0.77) were observed. In conclusion PO is reproducible in stable COPD patients at 1 and 7 days intervals.